A few months ago, Kim Vassiliadis, Calvin Groves and I went on a tour of listening sessions to gather feedback on our ticketing platform, ServiceNow. Our ServiceNow contract is up for renewal in September 2024 and we wanted feedback from our campus community as we approached this important decision point.
To make sure we had a varied range of feedback, we spoke with ServiceNow fulfillers, teams who use ServiceNow solely to communicate with other units, teams that don’t use ServiceNow at all, and people who only enter tickets in ServiceNow, including students. On the positive side, we heard that our users appreciate having one central tool for ticketing and like being able to share tickets across support units.
We also heard challenging and frank feedback on our ServiceNow implementation. For example, most fulfiller users of ServiceNow feel that the platform is cumbersome to use and complicates their day-to-day work. Time and time again, we heard that the way ServiceNow is designed requires too much explanation for a non-IT person to get help — an end user must determine whether they are reporting an issue or requesting a service, and that isn’t always clear. This is a small sample of what we heard.
Based on the feedback we received, we’ve decided to explore if another ticketing platform is better suited for our campus. We will begin an RFP process in the coming months. We’ve determined a handful of focus areas that would need to be addressed for us to move out of ServiceNow: improved agent/fulfiller experience, improved end user experience, and cost savings that would result in the ability to centrally fund a platform.
I want to stress that we haven’t decided that we’re moving out of ServiceNow. We realize that we may not find a new ticketing system that meets our goals. We will not move systems unless there is substantial benefit to both fulfillers and end users to make a change. As I relayed in many of the listening sessions, “we won’t move for 10% better.” Change is hard and we won’t do it unless there is a clear gain to be had.
At this time, you should continue the work you have planned in ServiceNow, upgrade and enhancement requests alike. If we do move, enhancements we make in ServiceNow will likely carry over. If we don’t move, it’s important to have continued improvement in the platform.
Thank you in advance for your patience as we navigate the RFP process. We will keep you informed with regular updates as they become available. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions that you may have!
Best regards,
Kate Hash